Happy New Year 2008, and LinkedIn
I am a casual user of LinkedIn. If you are not familiar with LinkedIn, it's a “social networking site” in the same vein as Facebook [where I also have a small presence] that is used mainly so that professionals can share their respective rolodexes. Putatively, its main use is to help people find trusted others—if I am looking for a new <whatever>, and you know a <whatever> maybe you can put me in touch. There is a whole set of recommendations, in order to provide some kind of context and some notion of transitivity-of-trust.
Today I received an interesting email. It’s from someone who appears to have found out that I am on LinkedIn, and wants to be linked to me. I will quote some of his odd email verbatim; maybe someone out there might be able to shed some light onto this.
This person writes:
I found you while searching LinkedIn for possible connections. I'm using it to discover potential mutually beneficial connections. I believe that we already have common connections on LinkedIn. However, one never knows what relationship or opportunity might occur unless he or she is findable, available and open to new direct connections.(LinkedIn provides an interesting degrees-of-separation feature: who do you know who knows some random person. It turns out this person has exactly one connection through to me, a fact that, had he actually gone on the site, he would be able to know trivially.)
He goes on to write:
Since you are a member of LinkedIn, I want to invite you to join the LinkedIn network I have built. If you would be so kind as to send me an Invitation to Connect from LinkedIn, I will accept it straight away.This is a really odd request. LinkedIn provides a feature where you can invite someone to be one of your connections just by sending them an email link that they then click on to consummate the connection. Why ask me to contact him? Someone fill me in here, because I’m just plain lost. Does LinkedIn have some kind of preventative measure to keep someone from inviting others?
I read on:
I sincerely hope you will join my network. It would be an honor and privilege to be directly connected with you. I believe then we might both benefit in the near future from having a direct connection.
Wow, this almost sounds like a Nigerian bank scam. It would be an honor and privilege.
Reading further down, I can see how much of an honor it will be:
Xxxxxx X. XxxxxxxEvidently I am part of a privileged group of over 10,000!
Mxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx LLC
aaa-bbb-cccc office
zzzzzzzz - Skype
12,100+ LinkedIn Direct Connections
How many people out there know 10,000 others? If you do, do you know them all well? How can he know me well enough to provide a solid recommendation of me to others, or others to me? What value can he add to me by being “part of his network”?
Help me out here, guys.